


Sensing Sherlock

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:57:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2387474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's POV on Sherlock (as more than a friend)</p><p>Updated March 2015</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sensing Sherlock

**Hearing**

Sometimes I hear a cacophony of sounds. Peaceful tunes interwoven into chaos, a melody only he could create. As clearly as I hear the plucking of the strings, I listen as he loses himself in his violin as if to forget, and to remember. I can hear his own melodies directing him to other worlds, past the window and the apartments of Baker Street. He often mutters, speaking in that garbled tongue only he could understood, and when he speaks out, his train of thought is too quick and slippery to be caught, much less comprehended. His patience is thin, and when he walks, he leaves everyone behind, most do not --can not-- follow, and instead leave with eyes brimming with loathing, but I follow willingly, and I catch the surprise in his eyes each time, his voice my pied piper’s tune. (my swansong and my fanfare)

He wasn’t a fan of speaking in excess, and his long speeches were few and far apart. But each time his mouth opens it is not for naught. His orotund voice, although usually of a controlled volume, reverberates clearly across the room, each word enunciated with sophisticated grace and enough power to silence a conference hall.  He could be laconic at times, able to elucidate convoluted theories without epexegesis, not a word wasted. Were he truly interested, you would find him loquacious, able to rattle on and on about bombs, firearms, and an assortment of poisons and teas, and about his innate abilities of logical deduction, of probabilities and impossibilities, till they reach their denouements, his voice a languorous mask barely concealing his talkative tendencies.

**Sight**

Sometimes after dead ends or false leads, he would stomp back to the flat and sulk. His shoes would be tossed aside, favourite blue scarf strewn on the floor and ebony coat that usueally flaps ostentatiously in his wake hanging from the empty chair as he paced the floor, trying to rid himself of the adrenaline that still buzzed in his system. In these moments, he is little better than a caged beast, prowling the carpeted floor with vigour. He is like a child in this sense, excited at the aspect of these “small matters”. Then again, to a man as great as he, what isn’t?

I always see him in the back of my mind, when I close my eyes. My memory pales in comparison to his, his eidetic memory that misses not the slightest minutiae. My memory is atrocious at worst, and average at best, but I can never forget him, his every feature and quirk forever imprinted in the recesses of my mind. While his mind palace is filled with files on things that interest him, mine is filled with him, his trench coat whirling behind him as he turned tail and ran, his eyes as they changed from pale blue to dark grey to border a light teal as his thoughts hare in all directions,his spidery pale fingers ruffling up the sheer tangled mess that was his wild dark locks. I am mesmerised as I watch his eyes darken, a sign of his sieving through deductions and theories only he could fathom, constructing the palace in his mind. More often than not, he would press his fingers against his temples, as if that was his anchor. The sea--his storming thoughts that I wished would focus more on the living people around him, and not the dead people before.

He projects a veneer of insouciance and vacuousness, a visage so calm and reposed except when challenged. He is a vigilante, and minds not when others expressions only potray offense or disgust, he doesn't care for the judgemental gazes. He lives for his amusement, yet I look close and  _why isn't he happy?_   Perhaps he fears visceral things, things more tailored to intrinsic feelings as opposed to his cold hard facts, and truth, and intellect as sharp as a razor. But like a razor, he can be specious, and first impressions of him are almost always misleading.

  

**Scent**

He has a queer habit of leaving in the wee hours of the morning, only to return in the ungodly hours of the night trailing a faint sour musk of cigarette smoke and blood, sometimes inebriated. I drown in the sillage of his absence, only he could be as addictive as the nicotine he wears on his self. Despite not going off often, he usually comes back with scratches and cuts, his scent, along with the coppery scent that should not be on him, floods the apartment and I drown in him again. As I nuzzle in his pajamas, my dreams are filled with the smell of antiseptic, and my head is filled with him.

During those rare nights when he stays in, he doesn’t wake till well after noon. When he emerges, the cramp apartment floods with his musky smell, and I find myself inhaling deeper as I badger him to take a shower.

It showers here, in London, and sometimes it pours. But after the summer, the migling scent of  _him_ and petrichor, or the scent of rain hitting dry earth from clouds as dynamic and discombobulated and my thoughts or his feelings, potray my ambivalence so perfectly. I hate rain, I love rain, I hate him, I love him.

 

**Touch**

I feel my heart palpitate wildy for the first time since the war, sometimes, I wonder if he knows what he does to my stomach when he shakes my hand, or claps my shoulder. He knew I was woven around his fingers, and I would dance and leap for him.

But I wonder if he knew that i was woven so tightly that should there be a day the thin strings that kept me bound to him snapped, I would be as lost as a marionette without strings. another thing only he could do

And I knew it would always be this way, mine racing to keep up to the steady throbbing of his heart that waited for me even as his mind raced past.

Every time he grabs my hand, or brushes past a little too close, it feels like being shot with another bullet, except this time the flesh that tears is within me, buried deep within heartstrings. But I have long since accepted the inherent danger of being near him, and the bullet may as well be literal, be real, tangible. The bullet may as well be a bomb, as it almost was that day beside the swimming pool.

I don't think of the villain's taunts, nor the smell of chlorine, nor the heavy weigh strapped around my chest, only the touch of his fingers as he gets the bomb off me, gets me safe, and I feel so much lighter.

I remember tracing the carved letters of the epitaph in his gravestone, every fibre in me wanting to efface the words, if only so it would make it untrue. There must be an ineffable dissonance in the world, if he could be just gone. Just like that. The curls never again will brush my skin, nor the stretch of pale skin taut over elegant cheekbones rest upon my fingertips. Many hands have weighted my shoulders at the funeral, they offer gestures of commiseration, but they would never understand all that is him. His coiffure, his dress, his posture all coalesce into the being that is him, and he is gone, and he has taken with him all the assuances and the touches, leaving me with an aperture of nothingness that only grows by the second.

 

**Taste**

TBC 

[John finds out Sherlock isn't dead. Probably fluff and kisses.]

**Author's Note:**

> Co-written with SW (who does not have an AO3 account)  
> Editing In Progress  
> Please ignore the tense mistakes D:


End file.
